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March, 2024 (Vol.58-No.3) |
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Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on March 19, 1989 I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man commeth unto the Father, but by me. John 14:6 THE APOSTLE PAUL SAID IN 1ST CORINTHIANS 15, “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: and that he was seen…” Paul then listed the many witnesses to the Resurrection, including himself. Christianity is one of the few religions or philosophic frames of reference that start with the declaration of a fact: Christ rose from the dead. The intellectual world has always argued that a resurrection cannot happen; therefore, it did not happen. Therefore, anyone who says that it happened is either a liar or someone who believes in myths and fables. And any book that says a resurrection happened must be rejected out of hand as reporting myths and fables instead of facts. Therefore, the Gospels record myths and fables, because a resurrection cannot happen, and therefore, it did not happen. This is known as arguing in a circle. It is a philosophic tautology that does not prove anything, because it says everything it has to say in its first sentence. It does not base its assumption on facts but rather on the rejection of any facts that might contradict its assumption. My faith was shaken when I was in college, but studying the Resurrection turned me around from agnosticism. There were about three years during which I had to wrestle with my faith. I respected my professors and desired to gain their respect, but I was subjected to a subtle psychological pressure: I was made to believe that I could not be granted intellectual credibility unless I abandoned my “primitive” faith in the miraculous. I was the reader for one of my professors, which meant that I was assigned to grade the other student’s papers. One day, this professor called me into his office to have a talk with me. He said, “I cannot understand you. You are earning the best grades in the class. I can see the outstanding quality of your work. But I just cannot understand why you would hang on to a faith in Jesus Christ as the supernatural Son of God. Therefore, I have concluded it must be due to some kind of vestigial emotional attachment to your father.” I was smart enough not to say, “As much as I respect you in every other academic area, you don’t know what you’re talking about on this subject!” In all my years at university, I never encountered a professor who did not think he was born an expert in religion. I respected my professors because, for the most part, they would not offer their opinions on subjects they had not researched. I remember asking my history professor a particularly difficult question about the American Civil War. He was known as a classical specialist, but since he had taught in nearly every area of history, I thought he could help me. He told me he did not want to answer my question because he was not an expert on the Civil War, and he directed me to another professor who specialized in that field. Although my professors would not give an opinion on a controversial subject that they were not experts on, they always seemed to have an opinion to offer about Christianity! They could say without hesitation, “A resurrection cannot occur.” The premise of Christianity is that a resurrection can occur. Therefore, if it did occur and is demonstrable by facts, you should pause in your tracts and take a long look at the Person who is said to have risen from the dead. The significance of the Resurrection is not only the fact that Jesus rose from the dead but also that He made many astounding claims about Himself, including the prophecy that He would rise from the dead. The significance of the Resurrection is that the very One who made those claims is the One who is alleged to have risen. Jesus’ Resurrection validates all the other claims He made about Himself. I finally began to see that many of my professors did not deserve the respect they had gained by virtue of their academic authority, when they assumed, ipso facto, that they were experts in religion. In reality, they were not. I could ask any of those who denied the Resurrection a few simple questions and discover that they had not spent even a few hours of their lifetimes examining the available evidence for this alleged fact. I remember a man I greatly respected with whom I did my doctoral studies at Stanford University. He later went on to become the president of a university in New York. I once asked him why he had never looked at the evidence for the Resurrection. He replied, in essence, “Because if the Resurrection were true, I would have to rebuild my entire life. And the chances of its being true are so remote, in my judgment, that I don’t want to run the risk of looking at the evidence!” That was foolish, but at least he was willing to admit that he had not looked. As an undergraduate history major, I learned there is no such thing as absolute “historical certainty” about any past event. By definition, historical certainty requires that every “logically available” piece of evidence has been examined. For example, the evidence for any historical event must include eyewitness testimony. This is logically available evidence, but it is not always practically or realistically available. When you are generations removed from a historical event and cannot personally be an eyewitness, any judgment concerning that event becomes relative, to some degree. But historical certainty and psychological certainty are not the same thing. Psychological certainty is the inevitable outcome of being exposed to the facts. That is how our jury system works: if you expose yourself to facts, there comes a point where you can no longer remain uncertain. You become convinced one way or the other. That is the point I am making about the Resurrection. If you insist on arguing in a circle and refuse to look at the evidence, then your opinions on the subject are worthless. You might base your opinion on the probability of a resurrection’s occurring, but that is exactly the point of Christianity: there has not been any other occurrence in history like it. I had to look at the evidence, and in so doing, I became convinced that Jesus came out of the tomb. Then I had to ask the question, “What is my next step?” And I started on a path that led me to where I am today. In the following messages, I will present the reasons why I believe Jesus came out of the tomb. But in today’s message, I want to talk about why His particular Resurrection is so significant. And in so doing, I will expose the ignorance of those who have rejected the only Christ to be found in history. When I was in college, I was offered an alternative view of Christ. I would receive instant respect if I would only “demythologize” Jesus and accept Him as another “good and wise” teacher like the Gautama Buddha, Confucius, or Muhammad. These are leaders of respected religions that have identifiable historical founders. I would be accepted as an intellectual if I would put Jesus on the same plane of respectability as those other religious leaders, and if I would discount the miraculous parts of the Gospels. Besides, the miracles recorded in the Gospels were alleged to by myths that had been added later by Jesus’ followers. Everyone in the intellectual world wants to respect Jesus. I have never encountered an intellectual who was willing to say that Jesus was insane. I have never found anyone willing to say that Jesus was a fake. And yet, upon exposure to the evidence, I came to see that C.S. Lewis as right when he said that when you confront Jesus, you are faced with a shocking alternative: He is either of the order of a man who thinks he is poached egg, or He is what He claimed to be, the Savior of the world; and there is nothing in between. Why do people call Jesus a “good and wise” teacher? Most people would answer, “Because of what He said and did.” So I would ask, “What do you mean by ‘what He said and did?’ What is your source? Where do you go to find out what Jesus said and did?” Interestingly enough, even those who say that Jesus was a good and wise teacher try to prove their point by quoting from the Gospels! But for the purposes of this discussion, it does not matter to me what source you want to use. Most scholars agree that Mark wrote his Gospel first. Matthew’s Gospel was written later, at Antioch, and Luke’s Gospel also followed Mark’s. If you can read the Greek texts of the Gospels, you can see passages in Matthew’s Gospel where his writing style suddenly changes. You find the same phenomenon in Luke. When you examine passages that have identical phraseology in Matthew and Luke, you find that they are quotations from Mark. Matthew has a certain style, but he quotes portions of Mark’s Gospel. Likewise, Luke has a certain style, but he also quotes passages from Mark. In some passages, Matthew and Luke use a style that is different from all three of these writers. This has led scholars to postulate the existence of another document they call “Q.” This hypothetical “Q” document is said to contain certain sayings of Jesus and anecdotes about Him that were passed on orally before the Gospels were written down. This has caused much speculation concerning the authorship of the Gospels. One early church father said that Matthew wrote down the sayings on Jesus in Aramaic rather than in Greek. Some have postulated that this early Aramaic Gospel may have been translated into Greek. This led later scholars to postulate that the hypothetical “Q” document might be a composite of Jesus’ sayings originally recorded by Matthew. There are sayings of Christ recorded by the early church fathers. There also are sayings about Christ that were passed on through the hymns and liturgy used in worship services. Some of these, particularly the sayings associated with the Passion Week, are different from the sayings assigned to the “Q” document. These various bodies of sayings are thought to have been passed on orally in the early church. Regardless of your source, wherever you find Jesus in any kind of acceptable historical record, you will find Him saying certain things that are intrinsically a part of His teaching and organically intertwined with His deeds. They are so inseparably a part of His teaching that to cut them out would be like amputating an arm. Take any historical source about Jesus, and you will find Him going around saying things about Himself or projecting certain views about Himself that eliminate the possibility of His being called “good and wise” by any standard meaning of those words. Let me show you. Number 1: Jesus seated all authority in Himself. Confucius did not do that. Buddha did not do that. Muhammad did not do that. Jesus made claims that make Him sound like a crazy religious zealot who believed impossible things about himself. Confucius made a logical analysis of society and deduced a plan that he believed would improve society. One city tried it and it failed, and Confucius supposedly said that it failed because they did not do it right. But his authority was his analysis. He did not seat authority in himself. The Gautama Buddha was a prince in India who sought deliverance from what is called taṇhā meaning “thirst.” This taṇhā is analogous to what the apostle Paul called our corrupt, deceitful lusts or desires. After having raised his family, Buddha set out to seek deliverance from this thirst that identified him with the pursuit of the things of this earth. He tried the way of sensuality; then he tried the way of the ascetic. He finally produced what he called the “Eightfold Path” or the “Middle Way.” By following the eight ideals of the Middle Way, Buddha claimed to have obtained Nirvana, which is the closest parallel to the Christian idea of salvation in the Buddhist frame of reference. He claimed to have delivered himself from taṇhā. To the Buddhist, evil and sin are involved with the false identification with the wheel of life. Your manner of living results in the accumulation of a force called karma. Let me give you an oversimplified illustration of this idea: if you live like a pig in this life, karma might make you return as a pig in the next life. Around the wheel of life, you have an unending existence. To obtain Nirvana is to realize the ultimate reality, “the that behind all that.” This view is rooted in Vedanta philosophy. Nirvana is said to be a trancelike state in which you lose consciousness of the self and touch eternity, which then supposedly stops the accumulation of karma. You can then live out the karma you accumulated in your present life; and when you die, you leave the wheel of life to become one with ultimate reality, which is nothingness. Buddha did not seat all authority in himself. In the Buddhists’ own scripture, he said, in essence, “I am not important to the way. All I leave you is the way. It worked for me; if you follow it, it will work for you too.” Buddha seated authority in his experience. Muhammad never claimed he had ultimate authority. He claimed to have received visions from Allah, and he based his authority on those visions. Jesus did not base His authority on visions. He did not point to an experience He had. Neither did He base His authority on some kind of logical analysis of society. He took age-old teachings and changed them, with no criterion of authority except for His own word. He said, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time…but I say unto you…” Jesus condemned the Pharisees, the most religious people in His day, saying, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like until whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” He said to a sinner, “Thy sins are forgiven.” He did not say, as a prophet would say, “The Lord will forgive your sins;” he simply said, “Thy sins are forgiven.” He said, “Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock…And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand…” Have you ever met a know-it-all? Whenever he says something, he thinks that is the final word. We usually do not make saints out of people who think they know everything. It is our nature to challenge someone’s assertions and say, “On what do you base your statements?” Yet Jesus spoke as though His word was the final word on any subject. No wonder Jesus’ family sought to lay hands on Him! Imagine what my congregation would do if I stood up to preach and said, “You have heard it said unto you, but behold I say…” They would probably say, “You must be putting us on.” But what if I insisted? What if I said, “All authority in heaven and earth is given unto me?” Imagine if I said, “If you do what I say, you are building on a rock; if you do anything else, you are building on sand.” You would think I was crazy. I want you to see that these were the kinds of things that Jesus actually said. No other founder of a respected religion ever spoke that way. Number 2: Jesus thought He was perfect. For the purposes of our discussion, it does not matter whether He was perfect or not. What matters is that He thought He was. We do not make saints out of people who think they are perfect. Thomas Carlyle said, “The greatest of all faults…is to be conscious of none.” We have a natural reaction of hatred towards self-righteous people. The Scripture is clear: Jesus said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” None of us are in any position to look down on others. You must be perfect in order to judge others. Yet Jesus never hesitated to judge others. He said, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!...Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” He said, “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the more out of thy brother’s eye.” Jesus forgave sins. While it is possible for me to forgive someone for a wrong they have done to me personally, who am I to forgive someone who has wronged someone else? None of us could feel comfortable forgiving someone else’s sins, unless we are an absolute hypocrite. Who am I to forgive sins, especially considering how many sins I commit? Yet Jesus forgave sins without any hesitation. There is a passage in which a rich young ruler came to Jesus and asked, “Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered, “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.” Some critics have used this passage to claim that Jesus denied His own goodness. But if you read it carefully, you will see that Jesus was not denying His own goodness; rather, He was countering the view that a mere man could be good. He told the young man, “Keep the commandments.” But the man replied, “All these things have I kept from my youth up.” Then Jesus put His finger on the one thing that was an idol that came between the young man and God. Jesus told him to sell all his possessions, give to the poor, and follow Him. He would not let the young man get away with calling Him good unless he also recognized there is none good but God. Buddha did not claim to be perfect. His religion grew out of his recognition of a sense of taṇhā that controlled him. He sought to be delivered from the evil of this world that bound him. Confucius never thought he was perfect. Muhammad never claimed to be perfect. In his teaching, only Allah was perfect. Yet Jesus never exhibited any sense of moral inadequacy. Number 3: Jesus would have us believe that He had an insider’s knowledge about eternity. He spoke of heaven with the same kind of knowledge that we might use when speaking of our own homes. He made such claims as, “Before Abraham was, I am.” “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven,” and “I go to prepare a place for you…that where I am, there ye may be also.” In John 17, Jesus prayed, “Father…I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” That is a part of the true “Lord’s Prayer.” The prayer in Matthew 6 that people call the Lord’s Prayer is not really the Lord’s Prayer: it is the Disciples’ Prayer. Jesus never prayed that prayer, because it includes a petition for forgiveness. Muhammad did not claim to have an insider’s knowledge of heaven; he claimed to have seen heaven in a vision. He saw a heaven that would please a desert man, with beautiful places and plenty of springs of water; but he never claimed to have been there. He would not have us believe he had a pre-eternal existence. When people asked Confucius about eternity, he supposedly replied, “I cannot solve the problems of this life, so do not ask me about the next one!” Buddha sought to touch eternity, as he viewed it, and he claimed to have touched it by means of his Eightfold Path. But according to his teaching, he first had to live out his karma before he could become one with that reality. He did not claim to have possessed a prior oneness with eternity. None of these respected leaders would have us believe that they knew heaven from the inside. Even if you disagree with those religious leaders, you can still respect them in their frames of reference as good and wise teachers. But not Jesus. He made such ridiculous claims about Himself that He eliminated the possibility of being called both good and wise. He could be good, if he were a madman who believed these impossible things about himself. He could assert these claims with a good conscience, although that would make him mentally deficient. Therefore, he could not be wise, because no wise man could make these claims. Alternatively, Jesus could be wise enough to deceive others into believing these things about himself. But if he were wise, he would know that no mortal man can honestly make these claims. Therefore, he would be a deceiver and not be good. You cannot call Jesus both good and wise – unless He is what He claimed to be. Whenever I would present this analysis to my professors, they would begin to qualify their previous remarks by saying things like, “I suppose Jesus was good in some ways and wise in other ways.” But that makes no sense. No one would say, “Jesus was a madman who went around saying a few good things.” You cannot separate those few good things from the whole man. Neither would anyone ever say, “He was an evil man bent of deceiving people, but He still spoke a few good moral homilies.” The intellectual world wants us to treat Jesus as a good and wise teacher, but this is not possible. If I ever made such claims as Jesus made about Himself, and I believed them and wanted you to believe them too, then I would be crazy. Or, if I did not really believe my claims but still wanted you to believe them, then I could not be good. The “intellectual” view of Jesus as a “good and wise” teacher” begins to shatter when you examine the claims He made about Himself. Number 4: Jesus made Himself the center of the religious universe. Each of the other religious leaders preached something apart from themselves. Buddha preached the way that had worked for him. Muhammad preached the revelation that had been given to him in visions. Confucius preached his logical approach to solving society’s problems. Jesus did not do any of those things. He said, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved…” He said, “He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” He said, “I am the light of the world.” And He said, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” Jesus did not come preaching an ethic apart from Himself; He preached Himself! You cannot separate Jesus from the ethic He taught. In fact, He taught that you could not keep His “ethic” unless you were “in Him.” Jesus preached that what you did with Him determined your place in eternity. That kind of megalomania disqualified anyone from being considered good and wise. Number 5: Jesus said there was something wrong with the whole world that could only be made right by His death. He said that His death would be a “ransom,” and He was speaking to a people who understood the Old Testament meaning of that word: A ransom was the price paid to redeem a lost inheritance of one near of kin. A ransom was the price paid to remove the stigma from an unclean animal, or the price paid to redeem someone who was under penalty of slavery or death due to wrongdoing. Jesus said the whole world was in a state of slavery and facing death and could only be ransomed by His death. Imagine what you would think if I stood before you and proclaimed, “I am going to die, because that is the only way for the whole world to be saved.” You would know that I was either insane or a deceiver. But Jesus added one more astonishing claim that would vindicate all of His other claims: He not only said He would die, but also that after three days, He would rise from the dead, exactly 72 hours after He was put into the tomb. He alluded to the Old Testament drama of Jonah, saying that as Jonah was in the belly of a great fish for three days and three nights, even so, He would be in the earth for three days and three nights. He said, in essence, “I will die and go into the tomb, but I will come out again.” The fact of the Resurrection is in itself staggering, and that is the subject of my next message. But put the Resurrection in this context: the very Person who prophesied that He would rise from the dead is the One who made all those other astonishing claims about Himself. If He indeed came out of that tomb, then I want to take another look at His other claims. If anyone I knew made those claims about himself, I would say, “You’re putting me on.” And if they insisted that those claims were true, I might have to take them to have a mental examination. But if they died and came out of the tomb exactly 72 hours later, I would have to look at them in a new light. Some people have complicated, philosophical definitions of God. I heard one theologian say that in order to prove God’s existence, you must first assume that God is personal. And since it is the nature of a person to reveal himself, you can look for the revelation and find it in Jesus Christ. That is nonsense! Someone strode on the stage of history who seated all authority in Himself. That in itself grabs my attention, because I want to know who the Boss is. He thought He was perfect. He said He knew the eternal world from the inside, which if true, makes Him the best expert on the subject. He made Himself the center of the religious universe. He said His death would remove whatever barrier existed between me and God and would somehow ransom the world. He is the One who gives me the key to eternal life based upon what I do with Him. He said He would rise again, and He did. I do not need a better starting point for a definition of God. Because Jesus came out of the tomb and ascended, He is what He claimed to be. Jesus is the peg to which my life is tethered; He is the One whose opinion I care about. Like Paul, I can say, “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord…” That is the basis of my faith, and that is why studying the historical evidence for the Resurrection became an obsession with me. Everything hinged on one question: “Did Jesus come out of that tomb?” The answer is, “Yes, He did,” and that will be the subject of my next message. Reprinted with permission from Pastor Melissa Scott To be continued next month… This year Easter will be observed on Sunday, March 31. Easter Sunday always occurs on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon. 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